I gotta levitate for this one. Sometimes you simply
have to tell gravity, “No, I have to do magic.” And then you’re free to hover a
few feet above the ground in a cross-legged position while you concentrate on
the other thing that is happening. In this case it is music.
Elizabeth Joan Kelly is doing the magic and the
music. Recorded live for Phantom Circuit episode #239, Kelly brings her
considerable chops as a singer, a songwriter, and a mischievous experimental
imp to the table, delighting everybody in earshot with magnificent synthesizers
and baroque arrangements, recalling Vangelis and Tangerine Dream and Enya and
Björk, but also the sweeping buzz and interjected interruption of our greatest
generation of outsider talent. You know who I’m talking about – pretty much
every tape-releasing kook who I’ve chattered about on this site and others. I
listen to this stuff to get my mind kicked around, to be bombarded with the
unexpected and the odd.
And while Kelly does that, there’s an intense,
trancelike capacity to the three tracks she performed here. You can get lost in
them, even the minor-key soundtrackey piano trills halfway through “Beau
Travail.” What’s clear is that Kelly’s not content to noodle aimlessly through
an ambient shtick – she’s got more important things on her mind. And Departure 2019 is just a tiny sampling
of what she’s got in store – and has already released. I guess I’ll have to
come out of this magic state at some point, lower my hovering ass the three
feet back to the floor. But not until I listen to this one a second time.
--Ryan
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